Character Naming Conventions

[clark411]

I tend to say no to players that bring in names that are designed to be humorous, as I don't really run comedy. Characters can end up in situations that make the players laugh, players can laugh and enjoy themselves making with the merriment (and do typically) but I find it very difficult to maintain the drama when dealing with a cast that includes someone like Thuggie McGreatSword or Poopgreaves the Elder.

Beyond that, my only other negs occur when players want to bring in character names and archetypes that simply aren't present in the setting. If I can say "sorry no half elves" in my world without half elves, I can certainly say "no Himiko Matsudeka the wandering samurai who seeks to restore his house through the code of bushido" in a feudal setting of western names, with no samurai, no bushido, and no no no no no wandering samurai.

 

[Desdichado]

I don't really follow a convention per se. I use the program "Everchanging Book of Names". With a click of the mouse it will generate 100 names from multiple literary styles. If you want to go with a Tolkien-esqe elven name it can handle it. If you want a Forgotten Realms name it can do that too. The shareware version already has multiple styles but with the registered version you can add styles to it later. I'll provide the URL so you can check it out.

http://ebon.uni.cc/

Yep, that's another one I like. I actually like names generators; I have probably half a dozen on my hard drive.

 

[Henry]

Hong has a good point - society in most default D&D settings is more fluid than a true medieval society. As a result, more travel occurs, and more intermixing of families and their naming structures will occur. Thus in, say, the Forgotten Realms, you could have Viktor Aquillitiyar, Half-elven son of a human woman and her brief elvish paramour (and from whom he gets his Rangerly instincts); you could have Rigesh A'qin, a woman raised half of her life in a barbarian tribe, after a Calimshan merchant settled down with a beautiful Uthgardt woman whose heart he won, and after the wife died in childbirth, he took his only living child with him back to Calimport (thus the perfect background for a Ranger/Rogue or Barbarian/Rogue).

Not to mention Half-Orcs, nations like Luiren, etc. etc. Many fantasy worlds are similar melting-pots, not at all like the more stratified bottom levels of European peasantry.

 

[Mallus]

I used to be pretty, well, uptight about character names. I encouraged players to follow my fairly loose cultural/racial naming conventions. But really, all I wound up with, and created myself, were pretty generic sounding fantasy name [though I loved some of them, like the so-lawful-good-he's-practically-evil high priest Koram Mallenian...]

Time changed all that. Nowadays, anything that makes the game fun for the players is OK by me. I trust in my DM'ing/storytelling skills to imbue the game with drama.

Lately, I've found making terrible puns has given me a tremendous creative boost. Its a bit of a game, a challenge; start with a obnoxious/obscure joke and then dignify it with actual story. I've found this to be really inspirational. So far this method has produced...

The Dread Pirate Brad [aka Bradento of Bradento] --a villanous pirate and kidnapper who claims to hail from a legendary lost city.
Spring-Veal Jack [aka Saucy Jack, Jack a'Knives] --a famous chef. Works at the Palm D'Whorl in the Narayan Arms Hotel, which is said to be the home of an immortal sorceror [or the Devil] for the past 200 years.
Brak Ton Golok [aka "El Breako"] -- a revolutionary half-ogrish painter of abstract religions scenes, famous for beating up his wife and friends. Sometimes associate of Clement Greensward, a former druid and art critic.
Vasco De Texaco and Sing Sang Soong [aka "Wrongway Soong"] -- a pair of famous explorers who attempted to sail east until the reached the past in order to prove their world was a tesseract. Actually discoved the artic circle and an ancient magical library.
Hee Tai Chee -- a famous warrior-monk and poet. Wrote an epic about his peoples war with alliance of horse nomads and Yuan-Ti which begins "The Union of the Snake is on the prowl."
The Right Reverend Don Magic Wand -- a pimp with a magic wand, which contains an imprisoned demon who feeds of the unpleasant memories of his harem.

 

[Gez]

revolutionary half-ogrish painter of abstract religions scenes... sail east until they reached the past in order to prove their world was a tesseract... "The Union of the Snake is on the prowl..."

And you can still manage to play in such a setting?

 

[eris404]

How do you go about selecting character names for your group? It's hard to choose a really top notch name for one character alone, but how do you arrange things so that the names of all the characters in group match.

In most campaigns my group has played in, it was pretty much a mishmash - whatever the various players came up with. It doesn't really bother our group, since, as Hong pointed out, that the characters are different races from different countries and so there's going to be some variation. Unfortunately, we did have a player or two who weren't very creative with names and I can think of one player in particular who played characters named "Bob" and "Aragorn."

I don't really like most "fantasy" names anyway. So many are unpronounceable (yes, we had a player who would name his characters something he couldn't pronounce the same way twice) and some are just outright silly, so I tend to stick to real-world naming conventions myself. That might not be all that creative, but at least I can make them memorable. My recent characters include George Barleycorn and Claudia Grey.

I'm in the process of making a new campaign and I've actually come up with naming conventions for different areas, but that's just because I think that's a fun detail. For example, in one area the person's last name is his occupation (like Joseph Wizard, Frank Baker, Anna Knight, etc.) - again, just like some real world names. I hope the players will like it and use it, but I won't force them to, even if they decide to name their characters "Bob" and "Aragorn."

 

[Mallus]

And you can still manage to play in such a setting?

So far, so good...

If things get too weird I just throw disproportionately tough monsters at the party. And magic items. They seem to like that.

 

[Desdichado]

Hee Tai Chee -- a famous warrior-monk and poet. Wrote an epic about his peoples war with alliance of horse nomads and Yuan-Ti which begins "The Union of the Snake is on the prowl."

Ouch! As an 80s music fan, that one in particular got a chuckle from me.

 

[Mallus]

Ouch! As an 80s music fan, that one in particular got a chuckle from me.

Thanks. I've been loving the 80's since high school. Damn, I'm getting old...

I think its funny whenever the subject of wacky names [or general wackiness] comes up. I fondly recall the old 1st ed. AD&D Greyhawk demigods who carried six shooters and made magic fire extinguishers in their spare time... And names from classic modules, like Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter, Keak Breedbate, Wim Wenders of Croodle --or something like that

 

[Saeviomagy]

I play Shadowrun.

One of the odd things about Shadowrun is that everyone runs under a 'handle', or nickname. Supposedly this protects their identity, but in reality it's just for the sake of cool.

Naturally everyone joins the group with hella cool names (often sounding like they're from the ninja name generator).

That doesn't last long. We make a concerted effort to change the names of everyone who enters the group to something more appropriate.

For instance the group troll was nearly renamed to 'geronimo' after he fell down a lift shaft, but in the end we settled for Zero. Short for ground zero, because a rocket launcher exploded next to his head.

My diminutive rigger (ie - wheelman) ended up being 'glove' because he was small enough to drive from the glove box. And if he's in the glove box...

In short - your character can have any name he wants, but in the end, people will know you as whatever the bard wants them to know you as...